AI slop exposes fraudulent publishing offer to Australian author Mary Colussi

18 August 2026

Touch Grass, the debut novel of Sydney based Australian author Mary Colussi, was published in June this year. And a fraudulent publishing deal was not too far behind. In this instance though AI slop played a part in giving the scam away.

An email sent to Colussi, apparently from a representative of a well-known publishing house in the UK, was full of praise for Touch Grass. Curiously though comments about the novel’s plot were limited only to what had been published online in its synopsis.

This despite claims by the publishing house rep that they’d read the book. Their AOL (once America Online) email address was also something of a give away, to say nothing of the request for money in exchange for a publishing deal.

While this wasn’t the best executed fraud attempt, as AI agents evolve their efforts will no doubt become more convincing. But asking an author to pay to be published would still arouse suspicion.

Traditional publishing houses do not ask writers for money, rather they pay out in the form of an advance. The objective of these scams though is catch people — particularly newcomers to the industry — off guard, and this is where they might succeed.

Is a comeback nigh for the tradie to CEO cappuccino?

18 August 2026

A few years ago I did an online coffee quiz. Highly scientific no doubt. My taste in coffee was — because I’m primarily a cappuccino drinker — adjudged to be “entry level”. Nice.

I occasionally partake of other varieties, like short black or piccolo, but they’re just a little light on coffee (and froth, and chocolate). I was surprised though to lean that Millennials, and Generation X coffee drinkers, are said to be ordering more capps recently. Gen X gets a few things right.

An article in The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Food section, with a headline proclaiming “cappuccinos won’t give you street cred” is pay-walled — an article about cappuccinos pay-walled, what can I say? — but you can catch the gist on Good Food’s Instagram page.

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Australia, coffee, trends

AI scrapers use bogus URL tracking tags to make website visits seem legit

17 August 2026

Screenshot of disassociated.com web analytics app, showing two examples of bogus tracking tags referred to in this article.

It looks like AI scrapers have been using a surreptitious method of making their marauding presence appear legitimate, this time by appending a bogus query parameter, or tracking tag, to the URL of the webpage they are targeting.

In the last month or so, I have seen a stack of page visit items looking something like this:
https://disassociated.com/?ref=yourwebsitepage/213page/page/page/14page/16page/page/2page…

I’ve replaced the actual website name with the generic yourwebsite marker in the above example.

What is particularly insidious though, is the way the crawlers are using the names of reputable websites and blogs that have linked to disassociated in the past.

Initially I thought some of these blogs had mentioned my website again, but after having a closer look at them, this is not the case. There’s also the detail that my web analytics app does not identify a referring page from the website supposedly sending visitors my way.

The frequency of visits doesn’t stack up either. I’m sure the blogs cited in the /?ref= parameter, that are supposed to be linking here, have many (human) readers, but I can’t imagine every last person, sometimes thousands of them, have been clicking through to my website.

Another possibility was my website had been shared in a newsletter. Usually though the URL query, or UTM parameter, I see in newsletters are along the lines of say ?utm_content, or ?utm_source.

One of the query parameters seen in the screenshot from my web analytics app does is ?utm_source though. However, with one exception I think, none the cited websites publish newsletters.

Also, if any of the cited websites were legitimately sending traffic here using a tracking tag, I doubt they’d use such a nonsensical URL path… page/14page/16page/page/2page… what?

It does puzzles me why these scrapers only seem to be targeting the front page of my website. Only a small amount of the total content posted here is visible there. But they’re AI bots, no doubt they know what they’re doing.

In the meantime, I’ll have to get used to seeing these analytics entries until I can figure out a way to block or mask them. That might be easier to say than do though.

But kudos (ironically) to Claude for acknowledging disassociated in response to a query about the Tiny Awards, in the above image. It’s much appreciated, truly, but doesn’t happen often enough.

IC 1101 is the largest galaxy identified, so far, in the universe

14 August 2026

Located one-point-one-five billion light years from Earth, the behemoth galaxy, at one-point-seven-million light in years in length, somewhat dwarfs our home, the Milky Way, which measures in at a mere one-hundred-thousand light years across.

Using kiloparsecs as a metric, the size difference between IC 1101 and the Milk Way, the comparison comes into sharp focus, at five-hundred-and-twenty kiloparsecs versus thirty to fifty, respectively.

For reference, a kiloparsec equates to one-thousand paresecs. A paresec is three-point-two-six light years, not quite the distance from the Sun and Alpha Centauri, the closest star to Earth.

IC 1101 however is minute beside Alcyoneus, a galaxy sixteen million light years in size. Alcyoneus however is a radio galaxy, a body somewhat different to the likes of IC 1101 and the Milk Way.

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astronomy, science

Humanity is not a monoculture, and nor is Australia

14 August 2026

I’m still reading through Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recently published vision of an AI future, but this paragraph jumped out at me:

Humanity is not a monoculture. People’s diverse values represent different tradeoffs they would make on important issues. There is no technological solution that can align with everyone’s opposing interests and values at once. Any singular superintelligence would have to prioritize some values over others and in the process would be incapable of being benevolent to everyone.

In this context, I think Zuckerberg is discussing the challenges of developing a so-called superintelligence that could comprehend the values of the world’s many varied, disparate, cultures.

Superintelligence, sometimes referred to as Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), sits above Artificial Geneal Intelligence (AGI), which in turn sits above AI. A go to example (for me) of AGI is the HAL 9000 computer, AKA Hal, from Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Hal appears to be conscious, and is capable of thinking and reasoning as a human would.

It seems to me ASI, which is (theoretically) vastly superior to AGI, should be able to extend its “benevolence” to all the people of the Earth, because understanding each of their cultures would surely be something that level of technology is easily capable of. Meta however is developing what they describe as superintelligence, which may vary from ASI.

But I digress.

I doubt Australian politician, and leader of a far-right party called One Nation, Pauline Hanson, would agree with Zuckerberg’s view that humanity is not a monoculture. Because during her recent appearance at the National Press Club, she declared Australia must exist as a “monocultural society”.

Yes, Australia, the place where people from just about every culture in the world, reside.

Surprisingly, Hanson views AI favourably, although she did call for stronger government regulation of the technologies. But technologies that may recognise humanity, and by extension, the people of Australia, are not monocultural? Can that be tolerated?

No doubt Hanson will be calling for the very strict regulation of that sort of technology.

Sydney municipal council wants shop signs to be in English

13 August 2026

Strathfield is a suburb located in the west of Sydney, Australia. I don’t know many people living in the area, so I’m not there often, but have occasionally wandered the streets near the railway station. About a third of residents were born in Australia, while a reasonable number of people hail from Nepal, China, India, South Korea, and Vietnam.

This diversity is reflected in the restaurants, supermarkets, and other shops, located near the train station, where the shop signage of many of these businesses are usually composed in the first language of their respective owners. Something, of course, seen elsewhere in Sydney, and in other English speaking countries across the world.

I can only comprehend some of these shop signs, but the nature of the business is usually quite apparent. The local municipal council, Strathfield City Council, however, does not think this is sufficient, and wants all shop signage to appear in English. I can’t see how this will improve anything, nor do I see a problem with the status quo.

The proposal does not entirely come out of the blue though. In 2018, the council tried doing the same thing, apparently without success. But eight years later the idea has surfaced again. Someone there seems determined to make this happen.

LinkedIn CringeBot 3000, generating AI slop of the best quality

13 August 2026

Since the volume of slop-in-general is of epidemic proportions on the platform, it makes perfect sense an AI agent write actual AI slop for consumption there.

There is no escaping the solar system, not at speed anyway

12 August 2026

The Voyager 1 space probe is almost one light-day away from Earth. But the craft has been on its trajectory since being launched in 1977.

Deep space flights carrying people will need to move at far greater speed if they are to, for example, reach Alpha Centaur, the star system closest to the Sun, in a reasonable amount of time.

But travel at high speed, even relatively high speed, such as twenty-percent the speed of light, poses another set of problems. Minute particles litter the interstellar voids, and could severely damage a vessel, should a collision occur.

An object the size of playing marble would strike a ship with bullet-like impact given the speed involved. Vessels could be fitted with shielding of some sort, but the sheer volume of particle strikes would eventually destroy any protective cladding.

Unless a way can be found to overcome this problem, or the laws of physics can (somehow) be bent, humanity may well not be able to venture too far from the solar system.

Zuckerberg says AI will improve your relationships. Did an AI scam bot tell him that?

12 August 2026

Tangentially related to the previous post. A few days ago Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg published the company’s latest AI vision. Or the one for this week at least. And the future is rosy, incredibly rosy.

If Meta has it their way, everyone will have access to their own “exceptionally capable” agent ~~— must Meta use URLs that look like someone typed out a random string of keyboard characters? —~~ (edit: URL amended) that seemingly will be able to help with anything at all:

Everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about. Your agent will work 24/7 on your behalf to improve your relationships, health, career, finances, home management, hobbies, and more.

But I’d be concerned about the relationship advice this agent intends to dispense.

As we learned from my post yesterday, some AI agents, particularly those attempting to scam people, specialise in faking relationships. One can only hope Meta’s relationship guidance agent is not taking cues from such scam agents.

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artificial intelligence, technology

AI scam bots better at faking relationships than human scammers

11 August 2026

There’s good news and there’s bad news, but in reality not much is really good. The good, such that it is; AI bots could well put scammers out of work.

The bad; the AI scammers are far more effective at deceiving people.

Disturbingly though, these are scams that involve entering into a fake relationship with the intended victim. In other words, AI bots appear to be better at faking human relationships than people.

Take a minute to think about that.

The human scammers, meanwhile, having been put out work, might instead look for an honest way to make a living. That would be a plus.

But here’s the problem. If AI scammer bots are so adept at tricking people, what else might they be capable of? Putting yet more people out of work? Or is there nothing whatsoever to worry about?

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